Free ColoringColoring Pages for Kids

Choose the best place to begin coloring. Some drawing utensils (such as gel pens or markers) are more likely to smear than others. If you think your utensils could smudge, either color the center of your picture first and work your way outwards, or to start at the top of your page and work your way down. If you are not concerned about smudging, you can begin coloring wherever you’d like.

Keeping a consistent pressure with the crayon on the paper gives a uniform, pleasing look. If you’re pressing hard, your hands will get tired quickly, so I prefer to press lightly. Interestingly, being aware of how much pressure you’re applying seems to be really hard for younger children. It must be tied to motor skills in some way. It won’t hurt anything to tell them this tip, but if they aren’t implementing it, just let it go.

Vary your strokes to add depth to your drawing. Crosshatching is a popular and fairly simple way to create depth using variation in strokes. Crosshatching is done by drawing overlapping sets of lines at right angles (this pattern should look mesh-like). For darker areas, draw these lines closer together. To create highlights, leave more space between each line, or don’t draw any lines at all.